Credit Repair Letters | Anatomy of A Credit Dispute Letter

Credit Dispute Letters: The First Step In Repairing Your Credit

The Fair Credit Reporting Act or FCRA of 1970 has recently been strengthened in order to allow anyone to dispute negative items on their credit report. This can be done with a credit dispute letter and in turn the credit bureaus must either delete the listing or verify it.The key to repairing bad credit is to write a properly formatted credit dispute letter to one or all of the credit bureaus and send them out via registered mail.

Always keep a copy of your correspondence and the receipt from your registered mail letter for further reference. It is also important to make copies of your credit report to include in the letter, not originals. If you have a membership with one of the credit bureaus, you can dispute the inaccurate information on that bureau ALONE on thru that membership. You will have to contact the other 2 credit bureaus manually.

Below is a step-by-step guide to writing a letter of dispute to get rid of those black marks off your credit report for good.

Once you have received your credit report and noticed that there is an error, outdated listing or a bad listing that does not have anything to do with you, it is important to look over the details and dispute these mistakes first.Make sure that for each listing on your credit report, you check the personal identification information. Often, a listing that is not yours can end up on your report because it seems to match up with your details.

If you dispute these types of errors first, other mistakes on your credit report will no longer match your file.

Make A List Of Items To Dispute

Once you have made sure that each of the incorrect personal detail listings are accounted for, it is time to look at all of the other damaging details on your credit report. List these from most damaging right down to neutral. For instance, a bankruptcy listing is far more harmful than a late payment or credit rejection.Once you have all of the necessary disputable listings set out in front of you, begin writing your first letter of dispute. Each of the three credit reporting agencies should be addressed, even if these disputable listings only appear in one or two of the reports. If the three reporting agencies are addressed with a letter of dispute for each questionable listing, it will ensure that, later on, these items do not appear on your other credit reports.

Send Each Dispute Separately

All listings, apart from incorrect personal data disputes, must be written out and sent separately. If you try to dispute several items at once it is likely that the agency will reject your claim on the grounds of it being irrelevant. At this point, you should be prepared for the credit reporting agencies to complain or even threaten that your request for a dispute on the items are frivolous or even illegal. This is untrue, credit reporting agencies are required by law to investigate and accept that all disputes are legitimate unless they have evidence to prove otherwise. So don’t give up.

Personalize Your Credit Dispute Letters

When writing the letters of dispute, you should consider handwriting them rather than typing them out. Make sure you use strong words that will make it clear to the credit reporting agencies that the mentioned listing is being disputed. Examples of these words are erroneous, outdated, misleading or unverifiable. Do not spend time explaining things in your letter of dispute, explanations are not considered useful. When the reporting agency receives your letter, they are then required to investigate the listing you have disputed.

If you are unsure of the format of dispute letters, samples can be copied or downloaded online by simply doing a search on your favorite search engine. These samples give you a good idea on how a dispute letter should be formatted and what details should be completed to get the maximum effect

It will take between 2 weeks to a month to receive a reply from the credit-reporting agency letting you know that your letter has been received and your dispute is being investigated. After a further 2-4 weeks, a new credit report should be received from the reporting agency to confirm that the item has been removed from you report.

Once the updated credit report has been received, you can then address the next dispute that you have until you have had all of the disputed.

Credit Dispute Letter is the best credit repair tool to correct errors or inaccurate information in your credit report which will affect your credit score and your chances of getting approved on your loans by the lenders.

Here are some samples of a free credit dispute letter you can download.

12 comments

My ex girlfreind Mary Luce got a credit card through her bank bank of america, and signed off that i was a shared user but i did not give her permission and i did not sign anything allowing her to put my name on it. So i would like to have that overdraft taken off my credit report please. Thank you

My husbands Ex put his name on all her Credit cards after he left and got some in his name with out his known is he at fault for all the charges it is over 60k right now! i have been trying to get it taken care of but they are saying that there is nothing that him or i can do because we are not the main name on the accounts and they will not give us any info on it even though his name is on there and it is on his credit is there any thing that we can do to take care of this????

I filed an online dispute with experian it came back verified. So now it won’t let me dispute it online any more unlike transunion so I submitted a dispute letter and the reply was experian recommends contact the debt collector? What is this am I not able to ever ask them to verify the debt again because it came back verified once?

If it comes back verified you have the right to ask what method they used to verify it. You may want to ask them for a copy of a signed application or something with your signature on it. You should tell Experian its a fraud account and you want proof of your signature.

I was born in CA moved to IL in 2004. Owned a semi-truck as an owner operator. In 2009 CA claimed I owed them taxes for the year of 2005. This went on my Credit reports.

I cleared up the issue with CA. They finally realized I was not a resident of CA nor did business in CA and they issued that it was “released, filed in err”.

CA representative told me they would send out a report to credit reporting agencies & I would not have to do anything. I had to dispute this with 2 of the 3 credit agencies. One removed it right away when they realized it was released due to being filed in err. The other one, Equifax, refuses to remove it. I can dispute it all I want and CA will stand by what I am claiming. But all Equifax is willing to do is report it as a valid debt which was released/ or payed.

They will not remove it, even though I never had a debt with the state of CA and this was originally an err by the state of CA. They claim they can not remove it without the state ordering them to release it. Everyone I contact with the state of CA said they do not do that and the credit reporting agency is full of bull.

I am stuck how to resolve this.

It shows this as an almost $13,000.00 which was “the individual’s responsibility”. How can I make Eqifax remove this from my credit report? It should not reflect on my, the individual, since I never owed CA this in the first place.

Unfortunately the only thing you can do is sue them. You have provided them with everything they need to remove it, by law they are required to do so. If they do not the only recourse you have is to sue them. I would find a local attorney to handle this. It may only need for that firm to send them a letter advising them you will sue, it may actually take a lawsuit to fix this problem. If you have gone up the chain of command with equifax and have proof that they have ignored your request , a lawsuit is your only recourse. Advise them you will be suing for your attorney fees along with pain and suffering.

But really make sure you have spoken with a few managers, you may be talking to a bunch of people in a call center or worse your letters may only be getting computerized responses. Document who you SPEAK to, and what their position in the company is. Get as much as you can in writing and make sure they know you are serious about moving forward w/ a lawsuit.

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